MamaCarts aims to help bring nutritious food to developing countries

May 9, 2013

Meghan Coleman, part of the MamaCarts team, conducts nutrition research on micronutrient deficiency in Kenya. / Courtesy photo

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MamaCarts is one of nearly 80 initiatives competing for $1 million in start-up funds in the 2013 Hult Prize Global Online Event. The top 10 initiatives by Facebook-user vote will go on to compete for the prize money. To learn more, like the Hult Prize page at http://noconow.co/hultprize, find MamaCarts in the list of projects (on page 11) and vote. For more information, visit www.mamacarts.com.

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Four Colorado State University graduates are paving the path to a more nutritious developing world through a microfranchise of food carts for use in urban slums.

MamaCarts founders Meghan Coleman, Rachael Miller, Lindsay Saperstone and Jeannie Whitler met while earning their MBAs in Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise at CSU. Each has unique backgrounds in international travel and has seen the nutritional barriers that face many living in the urban slums of developing countries.

The group was presented with the opportunity to create a business plan for a competition in October and began conceptualizing a way to make “complete, clean and delicious” food. While the team didn’t win the initial competition, creating the idea — now known as MamaCarts — “lit a fire” to make their concept a reality.

The for-proft microfranchise is currently applying for grants and competing to earn the $50,000-$100,000 needed to launch a rapid prototype six-month pilot program to further establish the concept. Miller will travel to Tunisia in June to present the concept at the GBSN Annual Conference after winning an online contest.

Once launched, each community kitchen will be able to serve up to 10 carts in an area, Miller said. The group plans to begin initial prototypes in East Africa and hopes to serve up to 1 billion affordable and nutritious meals by 2018.

The idea? Putting together puzzle pieces that “already exist” to better the lives of women and their community in other parts of this world.

“One of the things we’ve found is that a lot of the food sold on the street in urban slums isn’t sanitary,” Miller said. “Who cares if you’re getting nutrients if you’re really sick all the time with gastrointestinal problems?

“What we need to beat food insecurity already exists in urban slums. There are enterprising, entreprenueral people all over the world. People are increasingly growing nutritious food in urban slums, but there need to be more connecting pieces to make it accessible — including upfront capital that just isn’t there.”

The concept is simple: create community cooking centers with high sanitation standards, purchase the already-available nutritious food being grown by local farmers and businesses in each city and pre-sell that food to local women to sell in human-powered food carts on the streets.

Women will be able to earn extra income by selling safe, nutritious and delicious food to those in their communities in a well-branded food truck that lets people know the high standards of food safety.

“It’s empowering local women who live in these communities and already have their networks established to actually take a business and develop it,” Coleman siad. “Some of these women may already be selling food on the streets, but now that have a well-branded, recognizable product that will generate interest in the community. We’re just taking all of the lessons we know to be true that work in the States and helping to grow those in another community that could really use the support.”